Listening to Dmitry Bykov

Not without surprise, I found that I already wrote in the TRV about Dmitry Bykov - well, four years have passed ... Then I talked about Bykov’s books, now we will talk about his lectures on literature.

Life sent me a rare opportunity to listen to lectures by outstanding scientists-Bondi, Lotman, Gasparov, Panov, who, each in their own way, revealed the treasures of literature to philologists. But a public lecture is a special genre, and not only because it is a lecture for the public , t . e., according to the plan, for everyone.

Bykov’s lectures were built precisely in the genre of classical pole lectures characteristic of a long -standing Russian tradition, brightly represented in the lectures of Timofei Granovsky 1843. It is clear why this tradition was successfully eliminated in the total overcensatory Soviet times ...

One of the main features of Bykov lectures is a successful choice of the author’s position. There are no didactics in them, although they are conceived as educational, moreover, focused on young people. Bykov offers a fresh and often extraordinary interpretation of the works he discussed, usually included, if not in the school curriculum, then in the circle of reading a modern young man.

Of course, many of the analyzed works I know almost by heart, and yet from each lecture I will learn new facts for me or-more importantly-I join a new understanding.

Here, for example, is a lecture on Chekhov, read back in 2013.

I read a lot about Chekhov - not only Alexander Chudakov, but also Donald Reifield, and I also reviewed the book of the latter. Nevertheless, Dmitry manages to open something new to me, allowing you to see both creativity and the life of the writer from an unexpected side. And this applies to almost every author discussed by Bykov.

That is why I follow the argument of the lecturer even when I do not agree with his interpretation. Here he is convinced that the protagonist of Eugene Onegin is not Onegin at all, but Tatyana. I don't think so. But I carefully listen to his arguments-not for the reasons of Audiatur et altera Pars , but because I am really interesting. At the same time, Bykov does not seek to shock the reader/listener - however, often, as it seems to me, I would like to surprise him/her.

I am remarkable, I find a lecture on a remark, read three years ago. My generation - those who met the Second World War as a teenager - loved Remarus passionately; published in the late 1950s in the Russian “Three Comrades” were a book about us .

Bykov analyzes “on the Western Front without Changes” in the most detailed detail - the mark of not mine, but the previous generation. It was by the remark that these young people managed to read about the First World War, and then left for the second ... now it was forgotten that the Russian translation of the novel was at one time withdrawal from the Soviet libraries, so at first my father, and later my future husband was upset that “on the Western Front ...” I did not read on time, that is, in my youth.

From the lectures of Bykov, it becomes clear why neither Remarus nor Hemingway are included in the circle of reading those who come into adulthood today. If you also ask yourself such questions - listen or read Dmitry Bykov.

Rebekah Frumkin